TIECON Day 1

I attended TIECON today at the Santa Clara convention center. TIECON is one of the biggest technology entrepreneurship conferences every year and over 3000 people have signed up to attend this event.

There were a lot of people talking about startups, iphones, web and I saw many familiar faces (Dave Mcclure, David Hornik, Howard Hartenbaum, Eric Ries etc). I even saw one of Think Bulbs customers!

The panels weren't particularly enlightening but here are some notes I took:

Wireless: What’s working ?
- Messaging, communication (killer app) –Dilip Venkatachari (NEA Ventures)
- Video and branded content is working- Bernard Gershon
- Messaging is changing everyday (email, im, twitter, social messaging); network effect, perishability-Hussein
- Reinvent partnership, privacy issue

- Voice SMS, Google Voice recognition
- Developing countries applications
- Nokia comes with good camera and microphone: announced point and find
- Low cost APN, not AlwaysOn IP phone but think about 35 dollar phone too
- Pay with points not with money
- Enterprise app in Appstore; scalability is key
- Lian Lian pay

PowerConnect 1: Social Web
- Building viral into the experience as opposed to just a tag at the email
- Value shifts: In Linkedin, it is the content now but it will change
- Slideshare: parsing keywords from powerpoint
- Using widget and search to create a viral platform
- iphone application is control monetization
- Greater scale, greater the platform except very focused vertical

Keynote: TIBCO
- Life is not always on schedule
- Trillion of sources of information and absorbing them
- “Because there is fire in my eyes”
- Persevere: Never, Never Give Up
Parallel Session 2: Rules for Renegade
- Have metrics, measure return
- Don’t count on marketing to solve your product problems
- Don’t see point in being stealth


Most inspiring person today was TIBCO's CEO Vivek Ranadive. Remember if you want to become an entrepreneur, you need to have fire in your eye!

Steve Ballmer, ETL

BASES is proudly hosting Steve Ballmer as one of the speakers of ETL (etl.stanford.edu).

Some highlights of the talk:

1. People are more cautious because of the economic downturn--> If you have a good idea, you'll get funding. The mediocore ideas that were funded before will not and should not be funded now.

2. Hire good people and a lot of patience; 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration is the wrong mentality

3. Emerging technology trends: Many-core processing, screens everywhere, natural UI, all content digital

4. Software powered experiences: Rich client+ cloud, span multiple devices, persistent and personal

5. Timing now is great for startups. Right ingredients are here and dream big

6. Contraction of venture capital capital is not significant enough to drive down innovation

7. Patience vs. Short Term results; Passion for technology vs. Passion for customers; Yin vs. Yang

8. Dig in and do what you love doing; work very hard at it

9. Wish he had taken more computer science classes; Learn how to read balance sheet; cases of Codek and Polaroid; managing art organization (symphony, ballet vs. corporations)